“With persons likely to be tortured, there’s not even [been] a claim of a cost-benefit analysis. It’s not like you’re torturing to get the ticking bomb. It’s just that we would rather send this person back and have that person face torture than keep them imprisoned in Canada. There’s not even a trade-off there. It seems to me you can only come to a conclusion like that if you don’t accept the person as fully human.”
– University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin
As journalism catches up with our most recent history, this turn of events which landed Canadian citizen Maher Arar in a torture chamber in Syria will become more and more familiar. ‘Ethics’ and ‘war’ are certainly two words that have no business being anywhere near one another according to the right-wing hawks out there, but I’ve disagreed with that opinion from the start. When the rules that govern our decision making are eliminated, as they were after 9/11, not only do we lose our legitimacy, but the results we hope to achieve move further out of reach.
A dynamic such as this, will again prompt the hawks to argue an unethical position that must disregard the mistakes as being a ‘cost of doing business’, while blaming someone like me for the fact that the mistakes themselves are what creates the blow back, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if I and others hadn’t shined a light on such things. This is the mindset that always seems to start from a point where the government is infallible, and it is the media outlet that publishes details of what the government has been doing without our knowledge that is to blame. The newspaper isn’t simply doing what a newspaper is there to do, but rather it is purposely trying to kill each and every one of us.
The details behind Maher Arar’s detention, the reason why he was picked up, came up in a hearing a few months ago, with Senator Leahy grilling Gonzo on why it happened, and also how we could justify outsourcing his torture to a country like Syria. (The Murder of Maher Arar – 1/07) I wrote about this exchange and set up a Google Alert for anything pertaining to Arar, but the information needed to figure out how it came to be that the US government had convinced the Canadian government to hand over one of its citizens to be treated in this way, was still bogged down by that tired “harmful to national security” argument, so often a masquerading embarrassment and nothing more. That is absolutely the case here.
A judge in Canada recognized this, and so he did what a US judge hasn’t yet had the guts to do, and that is to reject the argument made by our government that the people have no right to any information, especially embarrassing information like this. He made it public. It has prompted a robust debate in Canada about issues our MSM tends to drown out, like “can we give up our rights so easily for the sake of national security”? Due process is the big one for me, as it has become much too easy for the US government to simply pick and choose who needs to be removed from society without having to prove wrongdoing.
It made our government lazy and arbitrarily brutal. We have bought in to the foolish notion that torture is a legitimate, productive way to extract actionable information from a suspect. Here is my favorite pick of the Canadian media of the past couple days.
That is apparently what happened to Ahmad Abou El Maati, another Canadian who, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, was tortured by Syrian jailers into making a “confession” about planning a terror-bomb attack in Canada. He fingered Arar as an associate, and that appears to have been enough to make Canadian government agencies discard Arar’s rights like a used tissue.
Need we say that El Maati, once back in Canada, renounced his confession, saying he would have told his jailers anything, and that he apologized for randomly naming Arar? (Canada.com)
No apology from the US government should be expected. I’m sure that the major players involved in making stories like this a reality are convinced of their righteousness. We know that President Bush considers what happened to Maher Arar “God’s Will”.
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It should be noted that even though Senator Leahy at the time grilled AG Gonzalez, who it should be mentioned was not AG at the time of Mr. Arar Rendition/Deportation, he has not spoken about Mr. Arar since both he and Senator Specter spoke about there classified briefing with the AG and published their joint letter requesting an investigation.
Indeed – very good point Ed! The exchange was especially memorable for me though, as Gonzo went on about how Ashcroft had “received assurances” that detainees wouldn’t be tortured. That is part of the futile attempt of Bush to consistently say, “we do not torture”.
Like we’d send someone to Syria or Egypt for any other reason…
I’m going to keep this in the back of my mind once Congress comes back, because after the Canadian court releases the information, if Leahy doesn’t pick this issue back up, it’ll be a lost opportunity. The table is set for a real airing out of all this, and a discussion of whether or not this is who we really want to be as a country going forward.
I see this as being more important than the politicization of the US Atty’s offices…which is a temporary lapse, whereas becoming a country that condones torture is something sure to play a prominent role in the writing of our history.
President Bush repeated this line in a recent press conference when asked about the recent Red Cross report concerning the US treatment of prisoners.
I encourage you to keep it the front of your mind and take action. Since Congress is in recess you and anyone who reads this should go speak with your Senators and Congresswoman/Congressman. I once talked with a former Congressman and US Ambassador and he said the best thing you can do to convey an issue is to do so face to face with your representatives. So I encourage everyone to speak with your representatives this week.
Finally, I agree this is a more important and more fundamental issue that should be addressed.
I can’t get to wherever they are unfortunately. With a couple of 2 year olds, that type of thing is out of the question. I do write my people when it’s vital to do so, and with Ted Kennedy having already heard from me on this one, hopefully it’ll get attended to when they get back to work.
Not only for us, but for the rest of the world, that needs to understand we’ve hit a patch of temporary insanity here.